Profound relief came first, followed by suspicion.
Why was Hawes doing this? Did she wish to help in Wynn’s cause, or was this just a ploy to gain his trust for some other purpose?
“She is out of the keep,” Hawes said.
Chane tensed.
“Tell her that if she has need to send for me,” Hawes added. “But she must not return here ... not yet. Do you understand?”
Ore-Locks was watching them both in silent puzzlement. He had no idea what was happening, let alone why the premin of metaology came out unaccompanied in the night to speak to a Noble Dead who had invaded her guild.
“I understand,” Chane said, and he did, in part.
“Good,” she said, turning away. “Keep her safe.”
He hesitated, despair beginning to close in on him again. “I do not know if I will see ... she is with other companions now.”
“She will come to you,” Hawes called without looking back.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I know.”
Premin Hawes neared the bailey wall and stepped through, not into, stone.
Chane watched the wall appear to buckle or perhaps ripple around her like a disturbed vertical pool of water. She vanished completely through the wall, and the ripples in the stone quickly settled. For a moment, Chane was tempted to touch that spot and feel its solidity for certain.
At a guess, Hawes could not travel distances through earth and stone like a stonewalker. Unlike them, she probably found no barrier, even wood, an impediment at all.
Chane thought of Wynn and of Hawes’s final prediction. Perhaps they did have one ally inside the guild—a subtly powerful and potentially dangerous one, who also sat on the Premin Council. But how was he to tell Wynn any of this?
“How ... how did she?” Ore-Locks mumbled, and then his mouth just hung open.
In spite of everything, Chane could not stop a slight smile. He clutched the pack with his precious components, and then a bark broke the silence. A dark form loped toward him along Old Bailey Road.
“Shade,” he said quietly, waiting for her.
Her shape often made him forget the intelligence of the majay-hì, equal to or perhaps even greater than that of people, though differing greatly. Or so Wynn had said more than once. Shade must have been roaming the road, watching for them, or perhaps sniffed them out.
Ore-Locks glanced up at the bailey wall’s top, but as of yet, Chane had heard no guard’s footsteps coming their way.
“We should get out of sight,” Ore-Locks said.
Chane agreed, and with little else to do, they all headed for the Grayland’s Empire and Nattie’s inn.
Pawl rose, poised as the cowled stranger turned slowly, tracking the trio below in the street with his bow drawn. But Pawl could not be certain at which of the three this lurker aimed.
Everything that had happened around the guild somehow pointed to Wynn Hygeorht.
Everything Pawl needed from the transcription project concerning the white woman of centuries ago might also be linked to the young sage.
And the figure on the rooftop had not drawn his bow until after Wynn had appeared.
Pawl took off at a run across the roof. Swiping off his broad-brimmed hat and ripping off his cloak, he pulled his blade from behind his back.
Too dark for steel, the hardened iron blade was barely the length of a shortsword, with a handle of only rough hide straps wrapped around its bare tang. In the night, no one would see the strange, rough, but evenly patterned serrations of its edges. That blade was the only relic of his living days, of his own people long gone from the world ... and nearly gone from the fragments of his own memories.
Pawl took his last step at the edge of the roof as he threw his blade at the cloaked figure across the street. Then he leaped into the air to a height no one would have believed if they had seen it. The blade was too heavy and unbalanced to strike true, but all he needed was to stop that archer.
An instant before the blade struck, the man whirled out of its path. The blade hit the roof beyond the archer and tumbled away as Pawl arced across the street in midair. The stranger instantly spotted him.
An arrow struck low in Pawl’s shoulder and punched through skin and muscle.
He landed and charged on without slowing. Another arrow hit him dead center in the chest.
He heard and felt his breastbone crack as the second arrow’s head pierced his heart, but he never even slowed. A third arrow punctured him just to the left of the second. He closed on his quarry and saw the man’s—the elf’s—amber eyes suddenly widen above the dark gray-green wrap across the lower half of his face.
The stranger dropped his bow and reached quickly up his sleeves.
Pawl closed the last step at a full run and slammed his hand into the would-be assassin’s throat.
Bone cracked audibly as the elf’s head whipped forward and then back. His feet left the shakes as force drove him backward under all of Pawl’s strength and speed. The body hit the roof, flopping and sliding across the shakes until it rammed into and caught on a chimney, toppling one tile off its top.
The stranger lay there unmoving as Pawl went to look down over the roof’s edge.
Old Bailey Road was empty. Wynn and her two companions were gone, never aware how close she, or one of them, had come to death. Yet Pawl was no closer to what he needed, though he had halted an event that could have further hindered his answers.
He began pulling arrows out of his flesh and bone. The one through his chest took both hands.
Black fluids spilling from his wounds would never show against the black cloth of his attire. He would have to burn his tunic, though, to be certain the evidence was never found. Dropping the last arrow, he walked to the corpse caught on the chimney and ripped away the face wrap.
He had never heard of assassins among the Lhoin’na. Nor had ever seen one with such near-white blond hair or such a dark complexion. He had counted at least four others like this in his nightly roaming. How many of these were in his city?
And why were they after Wynn Hygeorht?
Leaving the body where it lay, Pawl retrieved his ancient, serrated iron blade. There was nothing more he could learn here. At a run, he leaped over the street again to the nearest rooftop, heading for home.
Dänvârfij grew nervous in the dark above Wall Shop Row. She had been waiting for a report since Én’nish had gone to fetch Rhysís and go after the wagon. Too much time had passed, and one or both should have come to her by now.
Worse, without Én’nish, there was no one to send off to check in with Owain and Eywodan. If anything happened outside her view, she would not know it. She hesitated at leaving her post and missing Én’nish’s return, but it was not wise or safe to allow so much time to pass without an exchange of information.
Dänvârfij stood up, heading for the roof’s edge. A light thud sounded behind her, and she turned.
Én’nish rose from her jump as Rhysís landed lightly beside her.
Had any prisoners already been delivered to Fréthfâre? Then she saw that Rhysís’s right forearm was bleeding, and his cloak was torn.
“What happened?” she asked.
“A trap ... a decoy,” Én’nish answered, “to pull some of us away. They know we are watching the castle.”
“Of course they know. Brot’ân’duivé is with them!” Dänvârfij quickly tempered her anger. “What do you mean by ‘decoy’?”
Rhysís would not look her in the eyes as he answered. “The half-undead woman, the majay-hì, and ... another of us pulled the wagon around a corner and were prepared for us.”
Dänvârfij stared, uncertain she followed all of his meaning. “Another ... of us?”
“Osha is now with Brot’ân’duivé,” Én’nish hissed. “Another turned traitor.”